Old updates: DLRP Today.com

[Adam]

All looking good. Good idea with the Gravatar - it should be used a lot more than it is, as I only see a select few websites and people utilise it.

[Gareth]

yay its back it can become my most viewd page again lol

[Anthony]

DLRP Today got a great link-through from The Disney Blog today: http://thedisneyblog.com/2009/10/13/dlr ... alogridis/

Even the name in the title! Always scary when something you've written reaches a big audience like that.

Toy Story Playland will finally be tackled soon in a special series summing up everything so far - the first rumours, the attractions, the layout, right up to the latest park map and maquette, everything. Just got a couple of bits to come first.

[Anthony]

I've done a bit of late Spring cleaning on the DLRP Today menu, so now each area (Park/Studios/Village) has its current and future projects merged in with all the other topics. The "Resort" dropdown has changed the most, with full listings for all the old 15th Anniversary topics, which were impossible to find before. I've also added categories for the Convention Centre and other recent developments. Basically sweeping Mickey's Magical Party out the way...

Current projects are highlighted in the new "Projects" dropdown, with them being listed by expected completion date, where possible. This will also soon link to a dedicated Future Projects page, which will list and keep track of everything that's coming, something that's often very hard to do with DLP.

I also made a certain billboard counter rather more embarrassingly obvious (and will report the "technical difficulties" once the Christmas launch stuff is done. Next job will then be a rework of the sidebar on the right, adding in more stuff like latest videos on DLRP Magic.

[Anthony]

DLRP Today now has its own Twitter feed. Not for links to the site's articles, but a complimentary feed of quick links and news items that either I don't have time to report fully or don't seem worthwhile enough.

Links to full news articles will still be via @DLRPMagic, this feed is meant mostly just for the sidebar of the site.

Yesterday is an example, when I didn't have time to post a full resumé of the annual results but could have just posted a quick link to the PDF until then. I think the idea is actually something Adam suggested a while ago... thanks.

[norhel]

Was just wondering where do you get all the "news" from?
For example pictures of the new tickets as shown on http://www.dlrptoday.com/2010/01/09/new ... 0-tickets/

[Anthony]

Just added a new dedicated Question of the Week page to the site: http://www.dlrptoday.com/question-of-the-week/

It also has a full archive of past question results, so these no longer just disappear from the site when they're closed. The new question each week will be posted on DLRP Today's twitter at http://twitter.com/DLRPToday I'll eventually get round to adding this feed to the top of each page like they have on the Disney Parks blog, that was originally why it started (the main DLRP Magic twitter continues to post news links).

Was just wondering where do you get all the "news" from?
For example pictures of the new tickets as shown on http://www.dlrptoday.com/2010/01/09/new ... 0-tickets/

Those particular images come from Extraordinet, DLP's image/text site. There are also the press sites at http://www.dlrppressinternational.com, although the quality of updates to those varies a lot from country to country.

[norhel]

Must say that I like to read all the articles you've got at DLRP Today. It's interesting to read

[Anthony]

Sigh...

Still no sign of DLRP Today.com returning yet, sorry. I guess the news over the weekend must have caused the site to use more resources than normal, but rather than inform me and allow me to make any changes they just plain suspended the whole account. This is the first time the website has had any problems like this.

I'll keep you updated.

[bigrossco]

thats so bad im sure that these web hosts are supposed to give you some kind of warning

[bensmum]

what news over the weekend? I was at DLP so am just catching up.

[Anthony]

Just some interesting Ratatouille news: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3423&start=200

It was picked up by a few other websites, but hardly enough to send the server into meltdown.

[Anthony]

Finally. We're back: http://www.dlrptoday.com

I've cut a few features "just in case", things that might possibly be "heavy" on the server like comments, Question of the Week and the category images on the left. At the moment the site is just on their temporary server, but if it lies low it should be moved back to the regular server (you won't notice a thing, it just means they get off our back). I've also beefed up the caching. Sorry, this is all web talk...

I don't know specifically what caused it to go above their usage limits, they're so spectacularly unhelpful with things like that. But if the pages were already quite heavy then the clicks from a newsletter sent out last weekend, followed by the Ratatouille dome news, followed by links to that from other websites like Progress City, combined with regular visitors probably didn't help. As a certain other Disney site might say "we've been hitting some record numbers lately".

Funnily (or not so funnily) enough I was thinking about a few tweaks just the week before it went offline, like cutting those category images/links on the left and changing the article pages to 2 columns, making the text area bigger. So look out for those, along with comments, etc, returning soon.

And of course, thanks for your patience.

[bigrossco]

so nice to have it back!

I am very supprised they cant help much, I know with my hosting account I can see what pages are being viewed the most and where people are being refered from etc which makes it easy to see if any part is being hit more than once

[luke85]

Glad it's up and running again!

[Anthony]

I am very supprised they cant help much, I know with my hosting account I can see what pages are being viewed the most and where people are being refered from etc which makes it easy to see if any part is being hit more than once

Yes I can see the same, but it's PHP code that causes problems. All the various bits like the Question of the Week that are dynamically created put a heavy load on the server as it "grabs" all the various bits of information and pastes them together. It must quite hard to tell if any specific bits are overdoing it with WordPress because it's all funnelled down the same index.php file. Silly though, they could save themselves a lot of hassle if they just looked into it properly.

[benjy]

Unfortunatelty Anthony it's crashed again
It's a real shame because it is such an AMAZING and informative site!!

[Anthony]

How recently did you check benjy? The site is now back, on a brand new server: http://www.dlrptoday.com

If it doesn't load right away, try clearing your browser cache or just stay patient, it might for some reason be connecting you through to the new host yet.

[The Butlin Boy]

How recently did you check benjy? The site is now back, on a brand new server: http://www.dlrptoday.com

If it doesn't load right away, try clearing your browser cache or just stay patient, it might for some reason be connecting you through to the new host yet.

It did go offline earlier this afternoon, then it came back on. Now it appears offline again!

[speedpacket]

Hi

THE move to THE new servers required An update of THE nameservers meaning depending on your location, internet service provider and your local dns caches it may take up to à maximum of 72 hours for dns propagation.

There is nog much that we can do about that, bug this Will in fact resolve auto-magic-ally.

Kind regards,
David.

P.'s.: sorry about typos but iPhone likes to correct too manu things...